Now We Need To Speak Up About ACTA

Stop ACTA & TPP: Tell your country’s officials: NEVER use secretive trade agreements to meddle with the Internet. Our freedoms depend on it!

Email:

I urge you to vote no on ACTA and to communicate its severe problems to your colleagues. ACTA’s vague language locks us into obsolete copyright and patent laws, preventing democracies from updating their laws to unlock new economic and social opportunities.It criminalizes harmless remixes by ordinary users if they achieve ‘a commercial scale’ (art 2.14.1) which many amateur videos do on sites like Youtube. And it criminalizes legitimate websites by making them responsible for user behavior (‘aiding and abetting’ art 2.14.4).Worse, it permanently bypasses the democratic process by empowering the ‘ACTA Committee’ to ‘propose amendments to [ACTA]’ without your approval. (art 6.4) In other words, it’s impossible to know what you’re voting for.The global movement against the US law SOPA showed that internet freedom is a crucial issue which belongs in the legislative process of each country. You should view ACTA as an attempt by a handful of companies to circumvent the democratic process, and you should vote against it.Thank you. Please reply if you have any questions.

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Here’s something to think about:

In the United States, we have been fighting our Congress who has been attempting to pass law after law that continues to protect the disastrous US IP regime while endangering our most precious democratic domain, the Internet. The world stood up against SOPA and PIPA, until they were shelved. We thought the fight was over for now. Boy, were we wrong.

Now, we have the RIAA and MPAA doing an end run around the lawmakers of every country, and attempting to codify their IP protections and then force them onto countries all around the world through two secret international treaties, ACTA and TPP. The consequences of these actions are even more chilling because it will negate many years of careful negotiations that balanced IP protection with innovation. That will no longer be true. That action alone is horrible, but that’s not the extent of the damage that these SECRET treaties would cause. Now they want to go after the Internet with false claims that they are suffering irreparable damage from piracy. Yes, it is a problem, but not to the extent that these IP behemoths claim. And not at the expense of future innovation. All this heartache we’re suffering because they refuse to pursue modernized business strategies that fit in the 21st century like the rest of us do.

• Read EFF’s presentation of ACTA and it’s history to become familiar with the dangers that this international treaty will enforce onto the entire world, while also endangering our Internet once again.
• And here is EDRI’s ACTA fact sheet that clearly details the problem with this treaty.

If you’ve already heard about ACTA and would like your voice heard, then please fill out the form above. Your message will be routed to your appropriate lawmaker. We need to once again stand together to stop this legislative nightmare that keeps rearing its ugly head. ACTA is not the solution. Overreaching legislation only causes more problems. Piracy is not the real problem. Tunnel-visioned protectionism is what’s killing us.

What we need are laws that recognize that the world has changed, and the Internet is a big part of that change. Business needs to enter the 21st century, as does an IP regime that will allow for a vibrant public domain. Our future lies in the acts that are prevalent on the Internet today – SHARING. Today’s IP regime does not even understand what that means. That’s what needs to change!

More ACTA dissension in the EU: Here’s the Minister of Justice of Lithuania, Remigijus Šimašius, who agrees that IP is not working (source: Techdirt, c4sig):

The essence of my comment was that certain provisions of ACTA are new to our legal system (more severe punishment, more control of internet providing services) and I do not see why those provisions are necessary.

I have also stated that our life is more and more dependent on R&D, new inventions, creativity. Existing IP protection system, however, is more about protecting the IP protection industry than a protection of inventors and authors. Current debate worldwide is a clear sign that we have to re-evaluate the existing IP rights system.